1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a program initiation control apparatus which transfers programs between a first recording area, such as a flash memory, and a second recording area, such as an external memory, and reads the programs sequentially from the first recording area.
2. Description of the Related Art
In a flash memory to be in heavy usage as a storage of a program etc., there are a NOR type and a NAND type when dividing roughly. Although the NOR type flash memory allows the random access by one byte unit, its cost is higher and its scale of integration is lower compared with the NAND type. On the other hand, although the NAND type flash memory is less expensive and its scale of integration is higher compared with the NOR type, its minimum unit of random access is larger than that of the NOR type, and the random access reading is slow. Therefore, a program where the random access needs to be made to a recording area cannot be executed directly from a state where the program is stored in a recording area of the NAND type flash memory.
In order to avoid this inconvenience, there is disclosed a method of executing a program stored in a NAND type flash memory after the entire program is transferred to another memory where the random access is possible by one byte unit. (For example, refer to Japanese Patent Publication Laid-open No. 2002-278781).
When using a program stored in a NAND type flash memory, there is an initiation method, where the program is transferred to a RAM area in which random access is possible, a CPU starts reading the program from the RAM area after the completion of the transfer, and the a system is initiated. However, since the system can be initiated according to this initiation method only after the entire program is transferred, a great deal of time is required for initiating the system.